USC Scientists Use TRAP Technology to Capture Early Signs of Acute Kidney Injury in Mice

  Recently, USC stem cell scientists have successfully set up a mouse that captures acute kidney injury disease signals, using this TRAP mouse to capture early signs of kidney failure, the description was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. They used TRAP technology to generate new transgenic mouse strains, and extracted cellular and genetic information from various solid organs of mice for the diagnosis of acute kidney injury disease.

  Invented in 2008 by Rockefeller Medical Institute scientists, TRAP technology attaches fluorescent labels to ribosomes in cell types of interest. Scientists can then collect the tagged ribosomes and determine which active genes "command" these ribosomes to make proteins. (TRAP stands for "Translational Ribosome Affinity Purification")

  On this basis, USC researcher Jing Liu et al. designed a technology that is simpler and more convenient to capture the disease signal in mice. When any one of the thousands of existing strains of transgenic mice is bred with a disease-signaling mouse, it produces offspring that carry markers in specific organs or cell types. Ribosome.

  Liu and her colleagues used disease signal-capturing mice to label four different types of kidney cells and identify early signs of acute kidney injury. As a result of surgery, infection, or drug toxicity, 5%-7% of all hospitalized patients experience acute kidney injury, leading to chronic kidney disease or death.

  Currently, acute kidney injury cannot be detected by doctors until a full day after it has occurred. The disease signal-capturing mice can detect disease signals early, which will greatly improve the probability of a patient's eventual diagnosis of the disease.